Production facilities include a variety of plants, such as processing plants. For example, some processing plants process raw materials (such as oil and gas) to intermediate products (such as certain acids), and other plants continue processing to end products (such as detergents, fertilizers or other chemical substances). Processing usually requires one or more sequences of processing steps. Functional units (or process modules) are machines, reactors, tools, etc. that are specialized to perform particular processing steps. The same principle applies to other plants as well, to manufacturing plants for example.
In modern industry, there is an ongoing need for the production facilities to switch between different products within short time. Facility operators seek to accomplish such flexibility by adapting process modules for easy replacement or reconfiguration. The functionality of the process modules can change over time. For example, process modules can gain functionality through software updates, process modules can lose functionality through aging. As a consequence, replacement and/or reconfiguration is a task with more and more complexity. Complexity is further increased by the trend to let the process modules exchange data with each other, and to let process modules make decisions on a decentralized level based on such data.
Such and other developments in modern industry provide opportunities but face challenges. The developments are frequently discussed under topics such as “Industry 4.0” or “Internet of Things”.
From a technical point of view, there are a number of constraints that arise from such developments. The constraints directly interfere with the operation of the production facility and can be decisive for success or failure.